


interlude/interlargos

by toro (sapoeysap)



Category: Formula 1 RPF
Genre: Angst, Brazil Grand Prix 2019, Introspection, Navel-Gazing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-13
Updated: 2020-01-13
Packaged: 2021-02-25 21:27:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,206
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21822169
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sapoeysap/pseuds/toro
Summary: its eyelids and aeroplanes for the next few hours
Comments: 7
Kudos: 20





	interlude/interlargos

**Author's Note:**

> cross posted to [tumblr](https://tororuhroh.tumblr.com/post/189066511774/grosjeans-was-like-make-a-georgealex-fic-but)
> 
> this is a work of fiction. please do not presume I believe anything here to be real. And please do not share this work outside of ao3.

There’s a limit, to how many times you can accidentally book a room with just one bed or push two beds together ‘just to be close, like when we were kids. George think’s he’s teetering on the limit. He’s a throat infection and a lovesick heart down. And everything stings. There’s a staleness to airport travel, spending all that time-wasting energy in recycled air, isolated from the rest of the world. Even when he’s in the car by himself, he’s connected to 19 other drivers, a team behind him. But here, flying over the nameless and shapeless countries below. George feels alone. Brazil is still hours away, he’s on a flight with Ricciardo of all drivers, which any other time would be a welcome reprieve. Now’s not the time for overthinking. George wants to project into the world. Instead it comes out as some half-hearted thought. No meaning behind it.

The L.A trip had been planned for months. When they were still both mid-field drivers sort of months. He doesn’t resent her, in fact, he thinks the world of her, she gives him what he can’t. She makes him happy in a way that they can’t be. Every smile at the disposable someone pulls out is genuine, but he just hopes the world can’t tell why he looks at Alex like that. George just wishes he had more time, a foolish fickle matter. He knows he’s had years and years of Alex time. Childish thoughts that he could keep Alex all to himself, prolong it until they were grey and wrinkled, a sign of the two inconsequential years Alex has on him. When they are old, he would give Alex away, used up with all the love George could give in subtle touches and late-night messages. A life of friendship not yet tainted by the real world. He’s an idiot for these desires, he’d be kicking himself if he had any fight left at all.

It sticks out, in the cabinet of memories, the drawer that won’t quite shut properly. The draw of Alex. Memories and snapshots shoved into overflowing drawers; Memories so accessible yet so easy to spiral over. His favourite played out so much that it’s a memory of a memory of a memory times infinity. George can’t help but sneak in, unlock the cabinet and open the drawer and access it. Last time he thinks, and knows last time is bullshit. It’s comparable in a way to the rush he feel’s when driving. Except the him in the memory is lying down on a bed, watching Alex roll over and give him one of those trademark Alex Albon smiles. The one that the world gets to see on press conferences and post-race interviews. Yet this trademark smile is changed. One reserved for him, a personal smile just for George. Oh, how lucky he is to be even in Alex’s life, to gravitate towards such a sun. Even if he is in the process of burning up. His insides catch fire, as dips back into the memory, watches his hand reach out towards Alex. Tuck up the sheet that’s falling. Graze a hand against the Toro Rosso logo on the shirt.

George knows he holds his breath, as the memory of the way he ran his hand across Alex’s jawline, up into the hair so tragically cropped close this season. Alex’s eyes had closed, he’d leaned into the touch. George lets go of the breath, in the memory and on the plane. Why he’d chickened out in the way he did, is lost to the him in the present, its stuck with that George lying in the bed, from so many months and heartbreaks before. Part of him wants to stop the memory, get off the mental pain he’s torturing himself with, but he’s already envisioning the way he leaned into Alex. Pressed that one kiss into the older man’s hairline imbued it with all the love he was to cowardice to say in words. What bros do or whatever, Take the easy out and slap Alex’s shoulder and pull him into a weird sideways hug. Alex had rewarded him with a laugh, the shy one that George can count on two hands how many times he has heard, the shy one that George can count on one hand how many times has been directed towards him.

Memories ripple stretch thin with continued replaying, George knows the moment he had evened out his breathing, closed his eyes and just soaked in the feeling of being so close to Alex. He lets the memory end the way the night had, with Alex pressing the softest kiss onto his lips. George had let sleep claim him. Like a fool afraid, running towards something for so long that when it arrived, he had run away. He’d woken up feeling like shit, throat sandpaper sore and an empty bed.

It’d been a funny story for Ted and the gang, an easy way to cleanse his heart and the guilt by making it a light-hearted banter. After all that’s what your meant to do when your twenty-one and in love right?

The landing is smooth, easy. Brazil is underfoot. Daniel’s laugh is cracking across the plane, braying and unabashed. Always the same, a constant in this world, just a little more lost and a little angrier this season. Like a boat left untethered.

George hopes that if he himself ever must return to being in that state of limbo, he goes out the route of the Australian. Having fun while he lets his world implode.

For now, he just pulls on the hoodie, the new one, not the one he bounces back between Alex and Lando, that smells of three different colognes and a friendship formed on a track. But a mint green one, it’s soft on the inside, unwashed and new, still smells of packaging and a bit of airplane air, untainted by the world of Formula One. That scent will be gone in a few hours. Just the act of being on his body, pushed out into this world unawares. Alex had left his Hugo Boss sweater at Lily’s, tucked up on her pillow. George hadn’t realised until he’d walked past that bedroom, hadn’t realised until they’d said goodbyes, that it was the same Hugo Boss sweater George had gifted Alex two Christmas’s ago. 

It doesn’t hurt anymore. Just mulls into the pain that will get shut off in a few hours, squished down by another hectic race weekend.

Growing old and grey as friends is okay, right? He shuts the drawer in his mind fully for once. He’ll play nice for the cameras, and on the track when he’s inevitably lapped by everyone for what feels like the millionth time. If this is how he must survive. Then he will be the best version of himself and keep on going, maybe he’s more like his team than he wants to admit, past its best and hobbling on. Still the future looms all prospects, sunrises and sunsets. He likes the thought of a sunset, dying warmth on his skin, like the way he had burnt up in Alex’ sun. But oh what a way to implode.

**Author's Note:**

> summary comes from the spring standards - rusty wheels
> 
> [tumblr](http://www.tororuhroh.tumblr.com)


End file.
